Erykah Badu: "HOTLINE BLING BUT U CAINT USE MY PHONE MIX"

Artists have been in a feverish race to put their own spin on Drake’s “Hotline Bling”, but Erykah Badu’s flip on the summer sleeper hit puts them to shame in 15 seconds. With a simple, hopscotching pronunciation of “cellular device” that is as hilarious as it is genius, she sets up what is easily the best remix of the tropical ode to feeling left out.

Taken from forthcoming mixtape BUT U CAINT USE MY PHONE and co-written by Seven Benjamin (her and André 3000’s son), the 7-minute mix is filled with novel touches that lift the original song’s balmy desperation into her own stratosphere: the brief but immediately recognizable OutKast sample, her ebbing and flowing backing vocals, the phone-recorded breakdown of a Badu hotline (“If you’re calling to beg for some shit in general, press 4. If you’re calling to beg for the shit but this is that pre-call before the actual begging, press 5.”). By the time it winds down with a relaxed outro that would have fit in neatly on New Amerykah Part Two, she hasn’t simply outdone the fleet of copycats—she’s running circles around Drake, too.

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